Puppy snatched by owl found safe in neighbors yard

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A foster mother to three puppies and their mom thought she had lost one of her charges, when a large owl snatched one right out of her enclosed backyard.

The Phoenix Arizona woman was taking the the four American bulldog mixes Sally Joe, Cozer and Fresno and their mother, outside for a midnight potty break when the owl struck.

"I hear Sally Jo do this death curling, screaming cry," Aimee French said.

In the dark she could make out Sally's mother jumping in the air and growling and barking as she and her pups ran to the end of the walled garden. Aimee could only make out a bit of white before the bird took off out of sight.

She had been keeping an eye on the "devil owl", as she called it, for the past several weeks as it perched in a tree just outside her yard, eyeing her puppies.

"I was very angry with that owl, I understand it's the circle of life but it would just tear me apart to see that owl," French said.

She searched for days for the little puppy, and had given up hope that Sally Jo was still alive until she talked with a neighbor who had heard through a grapevine of several other neighbors that a puppy had been found.

An 82-year-old grandmother told Aimee "she thought that puppies were falling from the sky - that is what she told me because the puppy miraculously appeared in her backyard."

Sally Jo was reunited with her family and only had a small scratch on her ear to tell of her adventure, but otherwise she is doing just fine.

The owl hasn't left the neighborhood, but Aimee is keeping a watchful eye on her little ones, who will soon be brought to local adoption events held by Ohana Animal Rescue.

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Comments on this Article

PLEASE....if you haven't done so yet....take the dog to a vet to be examined. Owls have very sharp and long talons and use them to pick up animals and fly away with them. They can puncture skin and you may not see it until the puncture wounds become infected. Since their primary food is dead animals, they could harbor eColi on their talons, which would be "inserted" into the puncture wound. The puppy was probably just too heavy for the owl to fly far with, so it dropped him, but had to have gotten it's talons into the pup in order to pick it up in the first place. By the time you see the infection in the skin he may be too sick to do much about it.